Signs in the Dark

THE HANDS OF THE SIGN INTERPRETER were somehow more captivating than the actual words spoken by the women on the steps of Mem Church. Almost everyone there was familiar with the statistics being reeled off on rape and sexual harassment, but the signer gracefully translated them into emphatic motions. Her hands, with their eloquent, forceful silence, reminded me of why I had come.

It is one thing to support the right to walk alone at night without fear. It is another thing to stand in the dark in Harvard Yard, clutching a candle and feeling foolish, in support of that right. As I scanned the crowd for familiar faces, I remembered the last time I had been involved in a political demonstration. Ten years ago, people wearing white had marched on Washington for the ERA. The Amendment had been defeated, and the march was written off as little more than a failed symbolic gesture.

Now, as I waited for the rally to end and the march to begin, I realized that the objective here was less easy to define. Although those around me were already starting to chant, "What do we want? Safe streets!," it seemed that safe streets, no more date rape, and stopping violence against women were all unattainable goals--as easily reached as saving the whales or ending war.

It was getting cold and the crowd stamped its feet, huddling together and blowing on their hands. This period of waiting felt unnecessary; after all, we knew the numbers. We knew why we were here. It was they, the ones out there, who had to be educated. And we were going to show them something, we were protesting the reality that a woman can't go out alone at night.

Caught up in the conviction of the moment, I almost forgot my own fear of feeling silly, of wasting my time. Feminism, I reasoned, had to be more to me than just theory read in course texts and discussed in section. Marching for a cause was a way for me to put my belief into action. I would, I hoped, feel the power that one speaker had conveyed when she shouted into the mike, "We are strong people, and we are in control of our lives!"

Well, I didn't. I felt instead that lumped under the same rubric were a number of cross-motives. People were demanding an end to anything from "date rape" to "this sexist shit" to "the patriarchy." Some were crying, "People unite" and others, insistently, "Women unite." I wondered how the men on the march felt about that. I wondered, also, how they felt about the polite request that they walk at the end of the procession, so that those women who felt the need to be separate could be. One cheer went, "Gay, straight; Black, white. Same struggle, same fight!" Looking around me, I could see very few Black marchers. Unity seemed artifically imposed.

There was no sense of oneness with the crowd. Rather, there was the uncomfortable feeling that while I was supposed to be experiencing a natural euphoria, I was getting only a sore throat.

Then someone tapped me on the shoulder. My roommate had caught up with me and she grinned as she slipped her arm through mine. As we walked along together, I suddenly knew that there was a very concrete reason for my participation in this apparently futile demonstration. I wanted my roommate to feel safe as she came back from the Quad or returned books to a library late at night. I wanted her to be able to go anywhere at any time without fear. And I wanted that same freedom of movement for myself.

We marched. We walked behind a banner that proclaimed "Take Back the Night" and posters of women with distorted faces, women who were angry. We strode purposefully across the Law School campus, through Cambridge Commons, down the streets of the town, past river houses and final clubs.

We passed places where women have been sexually assaulted. We passed bystanders who clapped and ones who jeered. We passed men who stared, people who turned the other way, youths who watched us in confusion. And as we marched by the spectators, I shouted louder and louder. I was yelling in defiance of those who restricted our right to be free, to walk alone in safety.

I no longer felt out of step with the other marchers. It seemed as if our chants had become synchronized and, in doing so, gained meaning. We spoke clearly; we spoke with a strong voice.

At the end of the march, we gathered again in Tercentenary Theater. Two hundred people formed a large circle, empty in the center but lit on the edges by the flames of many candles.

There are no empty symbolic gestures. Each act which demands involvement, which demands proclaiming a belief, has a meaning beyond its stated goal. The declaration of a purpose is valuable whether or not it is attainable.

I believe in the strength of symbols, in the weight of words as well as actions. I wanted, at that moment in the darkness, to trust in the reality of a future where fear of violation does not exist. I wanted both public and private spaces to be areas of safety. At the same time, it was almost enough to know that I was with other people who shared that hope, and who were fighting for its fulfillment.

The absence of fear, of fear that cripples movement and restricts freedom, is worth fighting for. We strengthen ourselves by asserting our unassailable right to live lives untouched by threat of violence, even if a nighttime march will not achieve safe streets, even if the night cannot yet be taken back.